28 October

The most immediately noticeable change to the free games in Windows 8 is that they’re all designed to run primarily in full-screen mode as “Windows 8 style” apps. On the plus side, this helps create some very streamlined interfaces without distracting window borders or menu bars getting in the way. Multitaskers can play some of the available games in “snap mode” by dragging the game to a small sliver on the left or right side of the screen, but the results are mixed—Minesweeper and Wordament work fine in this compressed space, but the card layout in the Solitaire Collection gets so cramped that it’s nearly unplayable. If you want to play Mahjong or Taptiles while you’re on a teleconference, you’re going to need a dual-screen setup.

It is so sad — no, it is revolting, really — that we are abandoning the huge benefits of overlapping windows, proven over thirty years of computing history.